High school English/Language Arts teacher Eric Jenkins has been named Indiana’s 2024 Teacher of the Year. Photo Credit: Circle City Broadcasting
I am always excited to share the story of an exemplary teacher who has earned recognition for their work. One of these is Eric Jenkins, a high school teacher English from Franklin, Indiana.
Eric teaches English/Language Arts courses to sophomores at Franklin Community High School. He has taught there for the past 11 years. He also teaches an Advanced College Project composition course at Indiana University. Furthermore, he is a teacher and consultant for the Hoosier Writing Project, a program which helps educators improve their writing skills and, in the process, become better writing teachers.
The honored educator has sage advice for beginning educators. “Teach fearlessly,” he advises. “And the first kind of tenant of ‘teach fearlessly’ is that you need to not be afraid to take care of yourself. We need to be well before we can take care of our students,” he continues. “Beyond that, I think the other piece of advice is, don’t be afraid to reach out to the community for support when things are getting hard,” he says.
An Indiana native, Eric inaugurated his teaching career at the American Christian Academy in Ibadan, Niberia, in 2007. The school was located in a walled compound outside of central Ibadan, Eric remembers. “You know the joke about teachers living at school? Well, we actually did,” he recounts. “There was a house on the school grounds that we lived in, a short walk away from the classroom buildings. Three other American teachers and I shared that house,” he continues. Once he returned to the United States, he taught for three years in Trussville, Alabama. In 2014, he relocated to his home state of Indiana.
Eric earned his Bachelor’s degree in Secondary English/Language Arts Education from Indiana University in 2007. He earned a Master’s degree in Literacy from the State University of New York, Albany. He completed the requirements for his teaching certificate from Ball State University in 2017.
To read more about Eric, click on this link to an article about him published by Indiana University, Bloomington.
